A 'Storm' A'brewin'

Success gets to a lot of bands. People ask Josh Smith, bassist for Halestorm, about the pressure all the time. And there's reason to wonder, considering the success the hard rock band experienced after the release of the 2012 album "A Strange Case Of ..." The band booked a spot on "Jimmy Kimmel Live" and earned a Grammy Award for Best Hard Rock/Metal Performance courtesy of the rock hit "Love Bites (So Do I)." In doing so, the band became the first female-fronted band to win an award in that category. There's also the current arena tour with country star Eric Church.

There's only so much further up to go. Smith could say there was pressure, and he could say the quartet from Pennsylvania labored. The followup to "Strange Case" will be released later this year but was recently finished. The band recorded the cuts mostly live.

"We were standing in a circle, playing together," Smith says by phone from Asheville, N.C., before the first date of a new tour. "Everything just came out really easily."

But it's no continuation of the past, either.

"We really stepped it up. It's a more mature version of us," Smith says.

The band is performing at least two of the new songs live, and local fans can get a chance to hear them when the band performs Monday at George's Majestic Lounge. The band will eventually start folding new songs into the regular repertoire, but Smith says only two are likely to make Monday's setlist. The show is sold out.

The Fayetteville event is a headlining solo act away from the arenas of Church's current tour, which continues with Halestorm as a supporting act through early February. Smith admits the country megastar makes for an unlikely pairing with the hard rock act. But Halestorm asked, and it turned out Church was a fan, so the tour got booked, Smith says.

On the other end of the spectrum, there was the tour with Megadeth in France a few years ago. Lead singer Lzzy Hale began by singing an a capella bit after the band had been warned that fans of the headliner can be unforgiving. A moment later, the fans started chanting for Megadeth. But two or three songs in, the crowd got into Halestorm, Smith says.

That Halestorm can appease both crowds says a lot about the band. If a stranger asks, Smith always tells them he plays rock music. But it's more diverse and nuanced than that, falling somewhere between Tom Petty and Black Sabbath, and somewhere between screams and balladry.

Following the conclusion of the run of shows with Eric Church and the solo dates in between, Halestorm will continue to tour, Smith says.

"We're going to travel to world," Smith says. "Aside from gigs, I don't know what else to do."